PHAR 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Nicotine Replacement Therapy, Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor, Solanaceae

• School: McGill University
• Department: Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Course: PHAR 200
• Professor: Barbara Hales

Document Summary

At first, people smoked as a sort of oral eroticism and for other reasons. Nicotine is generally thought of as the reason why we smoke. It is produced in plants in the nightshade family (e. g. tomato) Nicotine is the most psychoactive substance in tobacco. We can readily see nicotine withdrawal syndrome in rats. Nicotine replacement therapy (nrt) doubles your chances of quitting smoking. Delivering nicotine intravenously also doubles your chances of quitting smoking. So, (cid:449)e do(cid:374)"t know for sure if nicotine is the main psychoactive compound. Experiment: people told to smoke lettuce they continued smoking it, even though lettuce has no (cid:374)i(cid:272)oti(cid:374)e. so (cid:373)ay(cid:271)e it is a(cid:374)other (cid:272)he(cid:373)i(cid:272)al. Nicotine might be putti(cid:374)g a li(cid:373)it, a sort of (cid:272)eili(cid:374)g, o(cid:374) s(cid:373)oki(cid:374)g for s(cid:373)okers that the(cid:455) (cid:272)a(cid:374)"t (cid:272)ross. (cid:894)see graph in slides) The doses at which the rats get the nicotine withdrawal, which actually resembles heroin withdrawal, are way more than a human ever gets.